Itallian anti-trust chief warns of future Google monopoly

Italy's anti-trust chief has warned the nation's lower house of parliament of an impeding Google publishing monopoly.

Giovanni Pitruzzella said that Google's search dominance could lead the company to a publishing monopoly.

The anti-trust chief urged the lower house of parliament to extend competition laws to internet media companies, like Google, who are now competing with publishing houses.

"In the course of a few years, Google could become a monopoly in [the publishing] market,"said Pitruzzella on the Italian Parliament floor, according to the Daily Mail.

"Web companies such as Google and social networks should be subject to the same laws as offline companies."

Google has in the past been accused of promoting its own products through the company's internet search engine. As many as 16 companies have accused Google of giving greater prominence to Google brands in Google searches. The search giant believes that such complaints are inevitable because of the company's size.

"We operate in over 100 countries around the world, and the internet is disruptive by its nature," Google said in a response to Pitruzzelia's comments.

"It's understandable that our business should attract scrutiny and sometimes complaints in a few of these countries. We are always happy to answer questions authorities may have about our business."

Google has received anti-trust complaints globally. The European Commission (EC) gave Google a July deadline to address its anti-trust concerns. Google has said they were working with the EC to resolved the matter.

US senators are mulling their own anti-trust probe against Google following the EC's findings. Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee called upon the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Goggle following the EC's concerns.

Google has also faced growing concerns over its Street View service, which has been accused of illegally collecting Wi-Fi data during street view excursions.

At first it was assumed the company was unaware the collection, but upon further review collection was found to be deliberate. Google has said that the data collected was never wanted or used.